Arameans

The Arameans were a Syrian tribal confederation that established a patchwork of independent kingdoms in the Levant and Mesopotamia from the 11th to 8th centuries BC. By the 9th century BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire absorbed the Aramean kingdoms of Aram Damascus, Hamath, Palmyra, Aleppo, and the Syro-Hittite states, and the Arameans, Chaldeans, and Assyrians became indistinguishable. Between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, the Arameans were converted to Christianity, and, in 2014, there were 14,000 Arameans in Israel, practicing Syriac Christianity.